Ghosts?
by AlliPaige
Summary: It's just a normal day in Sonny and Tawni's dressing room... until unexplainable things start happening there.  Chad insists he can handle anything.  Is there really a ghost, or is someone trying to get a laugh? One-shot


**A/N: Just for the record, this takes place in the time frame before Sonny and Chad started dating.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own SWAC (which now, unfortunately, is So Random!)**

* * *

><p><strong>Ghosts?<strong>

Sonny sighed contently as she stood out of the chair in front of her vanity and stretched. She rubbed her eyes and yawned a big yawn that let out all of the day's frustrations. She ran a hand through her thick brown hair and gathered up her things, looking around the somewhat messy room to make sure that she had all of her belongings. Her brows furrowed as her eyes scanned the colorful couch, the fluffy chair, and her vanity.

Let's see... keys? Check.

Purse? Check.

Cell phone? Check.

This week's script? Check.

Next week's script? Wait... _not_ check.

"Shoot," Sonny murmured, quickly stepping around the room, going through stray papers on Tawni's vanity. In reality, even though they were close friends now, Tawni would _never_ let Sonny go through her stuff, but the blonde drama queen wasn't here right now, so Sonny rummaged as much as her little heart desired. Unfortunately, she didn't prevail.

The brunette dug into couch cushions and moved around accent pillows, but still no luck. Sighing in defeat, deciding that she would just make a copy of someone else's, she turned back around to get her purse and car keys and head out for the day.

Sonny stopped in her tracks.

There, centered perfectly on the vanity's surface, was a script. Upon further inspection (she approached it slowly and with care), she found that it was next week's. But... that was strange! She could have sworn that her vanity was cleaned off before she started looking through Tawni's things. Seriously, why would she have looked through all of her cast mate's extra paperwork if she hadn't checked her own desk first (which she did)?

Hm. Well, she must have missed it... somehow.

* * *

><p>That next day, Tawni was strutting along the hallway leading to her dressing room with a strawberry fro-yo in her manicured hand. She was just about to sit down and enjoy it, when...<p>

_All _So Random!_ cast members, to Stage 3, please_, a woman's monotone voice came over the speakers. _Rehearsal for tomorrow night's show is beginning early today due to a, uh... personal matter between Marshall and his mother._

Tawni snorted in laughter, but then her eyebrows pulled together as it sounded like someone was trying to wrestle the microphone away from the boring-sounding lady. A few unintelligible cross words were exchanged apparently, then Marshall's nervous voice came over the intercom.

"It's... it's not my mother," he laughed nervously, "I don't know _why_ someone would _say that_." It even _sounded_ like he was glaring. "You see, my car was towed and I needed to catch a ride with my... uh, girlfriend! Who _also_ happens to be a supermodel... and, uh, she... she couldn't make it at the regular time to pick me up... and... and... _oh, alright_! Ma is picking me up! _Goodness_!"

The sound of the microphone being turned off was heard, and Tawni wasn't exactly sure _what_ to think of that. She made a mental note to try and find Marshall a woman. The more he hung around his mother, the more like her he would become, therefore, the _less_ women he would get.

With a groan, Tawni realized that she couldn't take food with her onto the set, so regretfully, she sat down her strawberry yogurt on her vanity, shut and locked her door behind her, and ran as fast as she could in her stiletto heels to the stage. She just hoped it wouldn't _completely_ melt before she got back.

* * *

><p>It was 4:30, three hours later, and Sonny and Tawni tiredly trudged into their dressing rooms, collapsing into chairs and groaning. As she sat down, Sonny pulled off a wig and scratched her scalp profusely.<p>

"_Man_, these wigs are so itchy!" she complained, pouting. "Are your wigs doing that, too, or is it just mine?" Sonny turned and propped a wig up on top of one of the mannikins' necks by her wall. Silence was her answer. "Tawni?" She turned to find that Tawni's back was facing her, her arms splayed out in a 'what?' way. Sonny could see in the mirror that her face was upset. "Tawni? What's wrong?"

"My ice cream! Where is it?" she demanded in a tantrum-like way. "I left it _right here_ on my dressing table before I left!"

Sonny's brows knitted and she shrugged. "Well, it probably melted, Tawn. The janitor probably walked by, saw it, and threw it away."

Tawni was just standing there, hands on hips, shaking her head. "No, no, Sonny. My door was closed and locked. Unless you're telling me that the custodian came by, got out his keys, and unlocked my door _just_ to check our room for melted cups of ice cream, then that can't be it."

The brunette frowned, admitting that that was a little on the strange side. "Hmm. I don't know, then," she shrugged it off. Tawni was frozen stock still, glancing around the room stiffly. She began walking towards the door in slow motion. Sonny rolled her eyes. "Tawni, _what_ are you doing?"

The blonde spun around, her hair whipping, placing a stern finger on her lips. "_Shhh_!"

"What? Why?" she demanded.

"Sonny," she said slowly, like she was talking to a preschooler, "it's obvious!" Tawni quickly strode up to her, keeping her voice down and lowering her head, as if she was afraid other people would here. "There's a _ghost_ in our room!"

They just stared at each other for a minute.

Then Sonny just busted out laughing, holding her hand to her cramping side. She laughed and laughed and laughed, but her her boisterous boom turned into an uneasy giggle when she saw that Tawni wasn't laughing, too. Her giggling died completely, and she scowled. "Are... are you serious?"

"Uh, _yeah_!" Tawni nodded, her eyes as wide as dinner plates. "How else can it be explained? Both of our doors were locked!"

"Are you sure that you didn't eat it or throw it away before you left?"

"I'm _sure_."

"Maybe you just put it somewhere else and didn't realize it."

"I know—_know—_that I put it..." Tawni marched to her vanity, pointing down at the surface, "..._right. here_."

Sonny was silent, slowly sitting back down in the comfy chair on her side of the room, thinking. She couldn't help but wonder... could—could this have anything to do with the weird way her script reappeared the other night when she could have _sworn_ it hadn't been there fifteen seconds earlier? She shook the thought out of her head.

_Come on, Sonny, GHOSTS_? she thought, snorting at herself. _You're being ridiculous_.

* * *

><p>It was two nights later, 8:00 pm. Sonny had stayed late again, writing a sketch that she just knew couldn't wait. The idea was so fantastic that she had to write it down right <em>then<em>, before the idea left her head completely. She didn't like tooting her own horn, but it had enough potential to maybe be as popular as the _Check It Out! Girls_ sketches. She sighed as she finally put down her pencil and shook around her aching hand, trying to loosen it up. She was finally done!

Sonny looked through the pages, smiling down at them proudly. She hoped Marshall like it. She hoped her cast mates liked it. She hoped the _So Random!_ audience liked it. That was the most important thing, after all. Sonny was almost too caught up in her reading to notice the wig falling off of the mannikin's stand—_almost_. The sound of the fake hair hitting the soft floor startled her a bit, but she laughed at herself when she saw what it was.

_Oh, come on_, she told herself. _It was just the wig falling! Don't let what Tawni said freak you out_.

But suddenly, a thought struck her. Sure, the sound was just the wig falling, but _what_ made the wig fall? Sure, the stand wasn't that stable, but the wig had been sitting on it securely for the past 48 hours and not fallen off. She shook it off and shook the thoughts out of her head, returning to her desk to finish proofreading her sketch.

About ten minutes passed, uneventful, and Sonny had pretty much forgotten the wig incident.

SLAM!

Sonny jumped high out of her seat, her hand clasping her chest, almost squealing. A disoriented, heart-racing Sonny looked to find that one of her picture frames and fallen face-down on her vanity.

"It just slipped, Sonny," she told herself, voice shaky. "It just slipped." She lifted it back up adjusted it accordingly, poking it, testing to see if it fell again. It didn't. She'd have to practically pick it up and put it picture-down to make it happen again. Despite the shivers that were going up her spine, she tried her best to ignore them. After all, she needed to get back to work.

Five minutes later, just as she was about to staple her papers together and grab her purse, she heard a soft thump. From where it was coming from, she didn't know. It almost sounded like something heavy was softly hitting the floor... somewhere. She sat as still as a statue, lip bitten and fists clenched, scared to turn around and look on Tawni's side of the room. If something over _there_ fell, these coincidences were getting a little _too_ coincidental for her liking.

Sonny hesitantly turned, facing Tawni's side of the dressing room. Her scared eyes scraped every detail of the room, but nothing was on the floor, nothing was moved, everything was unchanged. Deciding that it was getting late anyway and that she needed to leave, Sonny turned back towards the mirror to quickly staple her sketch and get the heck out of there.

"AAAAAAAAHHHHH!"

Sonny nearly fell to the floor, her heart-rate thumping so hard that her head was pounding with it. It was like her heart itself was frightened, too, and was trying to jump out of her chest and hop away. She backed away from the vanity, grabbing her things and leaving her sketch there, forgotten. Sonny booked it as fast as she could, racing out of the studio in a cold sweat.

Her face hadn't been the only one in the mirror.

* * *

><p>Tawni Hart grinned, humming, as she unlocked her dressing room door the next morning. She had a Starbucks coffee in her hand, topped with whipped cream and a dash of cinnamon, she'd gotten to leave work early yesterday, resulting in a better night sleep, and she'd woken up this morning looking even <em>prettier<em> than usual. It was a _great_ day! What could go wrong?

Sonny came tip-toeing in ten minutes later, her purse clutched to her chest and her eyes darting around in a paranoid manner. Her hair was sticking around everywhere on the back of her head, like she'd forgotten to even do the back. Her blue blouse was halfway tucked in, and on one leg, the jeans were tucked into the boots, and they weren't on the other.

"What happened to _you_?" Tawni questioned, eyebrows raised so far that they'd almost disappeared behind her hairline. "You look _horrible_!"

Sonny took two seconds to glare at her before glancing around again like anything and everything was about to jump out at her. "Gee, thanks, Tawni. Good morning to you, too."

"Seriously!" she said, hopping out of her chair and going over to Sonny, eyes scrutinizing. "You look like you didn't sleep!"

"I didn't!" Sonny cried, her head snapping around the room, as if saying it aloud would seal their fate.

"Why not?" the blonde demanded of her.

The brunette crouched down ever so slightly, motioning with her finger for Tawni to lean in closer. She softly whispered into her ear, "I stayed late last night working on a sketch. Like, _really_ late. And... and... something h-happened."

Tawni leaned back enough to look Sonny in the eyes, her blue ones surprised. "Well? What happened?"

"I—I s-saw it," she muttered, voice shaking even then. Tawni stood back up to her full height with brows pulled together.

"What?"

"I..." her eyes were darting around again like there were snipers everywhere, "...I _saw it_."

"You saw _what_?"

"_It_. It!" Sonny repeated frantically. "The... the... _ghost_."

Tawni gasped loudly and covered her mouth with her hand. "Oh my God! You _saw_ the ghost?"

"Shhhh shhhh!" Sonny hissed, her heart thumping wildly at just the thought of what she'd seen last night. "It might hear us!"

"Sonny, it's a ghost. We can whisper or yell at the top of our lungs, but it's gonna hear us anyway," Tawni said in a 'duh' tone. "Well? What did you see?"

Sonny grabbed her wrist and yanked her towards the door. "Not here!" They stepped out into the hallway and walked a ways down, until they were clear of the dressing room. Tawni watched Sonny with so much attention, it was as if the brunette was a Coco-Moco-Coco lipstick commercial. "So..." she gulped. "I stayed late last night to finish up a sketch that I was working on, and I thought that I heard something fall." Tawni gasped so loudly that Sonny jumped. She glared. "_That_ wasn't when I saw it, Tawni."

She smiled sheepishly. "Oh. Well, continue!"

"Okay, so, I heard something fall. I went to go check it out, and the wig that I'd put on top of the mannikin was on the floor." Tawni was watching with the utmost curiousness. "I'd thought, 'things fall on their own all of the time', but it'd been on there for two days and hadn't fallen off even once! I thought it was a little strange, but ya know, I just shrugged it off and kept working. About ten minutes passed and nothing happened, so I forgot about it. All of a sudden, I hear a _thud_. It sounded like it came from your side of the room."

"GASP!"

"_Tawni_, that wasn't it either!"

"Ohh. My bad. Well, what are you waiting for? Don't stop there!"

Sonny pinched the bridge of her nose with impatience. "_Anyway_, like I was saying, I thought I heard something fall on your side of the room, but it was dark. My lamp was the only thing on in the room. It almost sounded like it was something heavy, too... I don't know. It was weird." She shivered. "But then, _it_ happened."

"It happened?"

"It happened. I didn't see anything, so I turned around, and there it was. In my mirror." Tawni gasped so loudly that it echoed in the hallway. Sonny nodded in amused approval. "_There_ you go."

"Oh my gosh! Were you scared?" Tawni's cast mate rose a skeptical eyebrow and looked at her in a way that said 'look-at-me-this-morning-and-tell-me-what-you-think'. "Well... well, what did it look like?"

Sonny visibly shuddered. "I don't even wanna think about it! I'm trying to forget it even happened!" In truth, she hadn't really looked long enough to see what it looked like. It'd been there long enough to frighten her, though. "But... I _do_ remember that it was almost see-through. And—and it was almost... _smiling_ at me. But not in a good way. It was... a _creepy smile_."

The two exchanged looks and shivered.

"What are we going to do?" Tawni asked, rubbing her arms like she was cold. "We can't stay in a haunted dressing room!"

"I don't know," Sonny scowled unhappily, looking down at the ground. "I really don't."

* * *

><p>Sonny grinned down at her Chicken Parmesan that she'd brought to work with her that day, not in the mood to savor the local Scarf and Barf. She cut off a piece and grinned at it's juicy deliciousness. She brought it towards her mouth, glad that <em>something<em> was getting her mind off of the—

"Hey, Sonny," a snide voice drifted to her ears, "heard your dressing room's haunted."

The blonde sat down at a chair to her side, smiling in an amused way. His smug look was something her on-edge emotions definitely _didn't_ need right now. Sonny took a bite of her chicken, letting the flavor take her away. Chad could be compared to an animal sometimes: if you ignored him long enough, he'd go away. And... well... he _acted_ like an animal, too. But, back to the point: she was ignoring him.

Chad watched her in an expectant way, but when it became quite evident that she was going to act like he wasn't there, he scowled. _No one_ ignores Chad Dylan Cooper. "Well, Munroe, just thought you'd want to know that the word around the studio is that you ran out of your dressing room like a little girl." Sonny glared at him for a fraction of a moment before looking back down at her chicken, her grip on the fork a little tighter than before. "I also heard that apparently you think it's an _ice cream-stealing ghost_, too." He snorted, and Sonny'd had about enough.

"I'm not in the mood, Chad," Sonny told him abruptly. He rose his brows in fakely-upset way.

"Well. _Somebody_ woke up on the wrong side of the Funny Hut this morning," he tisked. "That's not a very _sunny_ thing of you to say."

"Okay, _yes_, there IS a ghost in my dressing room, I _did_ run out of there like a little girl, it _did_ take Tawni's ice cream, my script DID go missing then turn up mysteriously on my desk when I was alone, and _yes_, Chad, _yes_, I AM SCARED," she finally exploded, burying her head in her hands. This was getting way too hectic. She couldn't sleep last night because every time she'd close her eyes, she'd see the face again. Watching her.

She didn't hear him say anything for a while, so she prayed against hope that he'd gotten creeped out by her and decided to leave, but that clearly wasn't the case when she felt a soothing hand on her back.

"It's okay, Sonny," she heard him say, but quietly. He probably didn't want other people to hear him being nice, if she knew him like she thought she did. "Do you... would you—well, I guess what I'm trying to say is, do you... need help?"

Sonny lifted her head up to meet his eyes, but hers were narrowed. "Help? What kind of help? How could _you_ get a ghost out of my room?"

Chad was quickly back to his other personality, popping his collar. "CDC can do _anything_, Sonny." She rolled her eyes. "If I can be The Greatest Actor of This Generation, I can get rid of a stupid little _ghost._" Sonny glanced at him skeptically, sighing.

"I guess, at this point, I'm up for anything," she sighed hopelessly. "Let me see what Tawni think about it."

* * *

><p>"No."<p>

"But, come on, Tawn! We need help!"

"_We_? _You_ need help! _I_ haven't even seen anything yet."

"So you want to wait until it gets so out of hand that _you_ are almost too scared to come in here, too? Why can't Chad come in and help us out? What harm could it do?"

"All kinds of harm!" Tawni threw her hands up in the air. "_Why_ would he want to help us? He probably just wants to come in to trash our room or scare us worse or something!"

"Come on, please?" Sonny begged, getting down on her knees beside Tawni's vanity where she was sitting. "I'll—I'll compliment you every day and tell you how pretty you look!"

"You do that anyway," Tawni said nonchalantly, filing her fingernails with a polite smirk.

"Well, I'll not only compliment you, but I'll compare myself to you! And... and point out all of my, uh, _downfalls_ compared to your fashion genius! How does that sound?"

Tawni glanced at her cast mate from the corner of her eye. "That sounds a _little _better..."

"Really?" Sonny beamed, eyes bright. "Does that mean you'll let Chad come in and help us?"

The blonde sighed and rolled her eyes, basically giving up. "So... what exactly is he going to _do_ that will help us?"

* * *

><p>"Let's see... well, Munroe, I looked up history of the studio, and there was only one death here: Splatzee. And it wasn't anywhere near your dressing room."<p>

"What does that mean?" Sonny asked, peering over his shoulder onto the computer screen in Chad's dressing room. "That there is no... _d-death_ or anything to back up what's going on?"

Chad shook his head. "Maybe... I don't know. You and Blondie don't play with Ouija Boards, do you?"

"No! Of course not!"

"Then... I don't know, Sonny," he sighed. "It could be possible that... I don't know, you were seeing things?"

"Seeing things?" she repeated incredulously. "_Seeing things_? Chad, are you saying that I'm lying?"

"No!"

"Because I _know_ what I saw!"

"Hey, hey, calm down, Munroe. Don't have a _cow_." He laughed at his little Wisconsinite joke, but Sonny just rolled her chocolate eyes. "There's this thing I read about on some ghost hunting website. It's called... matrixing I think. It's where you see something, and your brain kind of makes a picture with whatever it sees. It's like, if you stare at the clouds long enough, you'll start seeing shapes and pictures. Maybe... maybe there was a smudge on your mirror, and you were so freaked out from the wig thing that your mind thought it was a face."

"But... but..." Sonny disputed, "that doesn't explain my picture falling, either. Or Tawni's ice cream." Chad really seemed to muse this over. Then he smiled in a way that made him look guilty. Sonny zeroed in on him. "_Chad_," she said slowly, "you didn't have anything to do with any of that, did you?"

He avoided her eyes. "Well... I think now would be a great time to tell you that I _don't_ know why your picture frame fell, but... your, um, door was unlocked... and I was hungry... and it was sitting there."

"CHAD! _YOU_ TOOK TAWNI'S ICE CREAM?"

"In my defense, it would have melted anyway."

"YOU HAD BOTH OF US FREAKING OUT, THINKING IT DISAPPEARED! _How could you do that_?"

"Calm down, okay? If you think about it, this is really your fault."

"ME?"

"Yeah! You left your door unlocked! So... really, YOU'RE the one to blame here!"

They were both standing by now, in one another's faces. "It is NOT my fault! I could have sworn I locked that door!"

Chad shook his finger at her. "But that's just it, isn't it? You didn't. Therefore, letting me just waltz right in whenever I like and steal your ice cream."

"Wait a minute here!" Sonny stopped him, holding up a hand. "What were you doing coming into my dressing room anyway?"

Chad opened his mouth to speak, but what his excuse was didn't sound the best. He was going to say, 'I was looking for you', which was true, but then he'd have to explain _that_ one. But he had to come up with an answer. Sonny was waiting. "I... I _smelled_ the strawberry goodness."

"Oh, please!" she scoffed. "You can't smell ice cream through a closed door!"

"I was _really_ hungry, so I could to! And," he fished on the spot, "there was a draft... coming, uh, coming towards me! So I could smell it! And I opened the door to see if you guys had food, and you weren't there. And there it was sitting, all alone." His eyes got a dreamy look to them. "It would have melted. What a perfectly good waste of fro-yo."

"Then what about my script appearing out of nowhere? Or... or my wig and picture falling?"

"You said the wig was on the mannikin, right?" Chad asked obviously.

"Well, yeah."

"Had it been worn since then?"

"_I_ didn't wear it since then."

"Did Tawni?" he questioned.

"I don't... I don't _think so_," Sonny scowled, her head wrinkling in thought. "Wait! Yes, yes she _did_ wear that wig later on! Because she was complaining about her head itching like I had been! I cannot _believe_ I forgot about that! And when she put it back on the mannikin..."

"...It wasn't put on stably enough," Chad finished for her, nodding. "I don't know about your script or your picture frame, but we've pretty much debunked everything else. I think that it's pretty obvious that you two were just freaking out over nothing. Being total girls."

Sonny fixed him with an unhappy glare. "Ice cream-stealer," she mumbled.

Chad rolled his eyes and one side of his mouth curled up in an unfortunately attractive half-smile. It was nearly a smirk, but not quite. "How can I make it up to you, Munroe? Buy you ice cream sometime?" His voice was quieter, silkier than before.

"If you end up buying _anyone_ any ice cream, it's Tawni," Sonny scolded him. "It's _her_ ice cream you took, not mine." Chad scowled suddenly, and it was obvious he took back that offer. "As for me, you can apologize."

"Apologize? Apologize for what?"

"Scaring me, you idiot!" she scowled, slapping his arm. He whimpered and held his arm where she'd hit it. "And for making fun of me at the lunch table."

Chad threw his head back as he sighed hopelessly. Even if it was to Sonny, he _hated_ apologizing. It made him feel like... he was _wrong_. And CDC never screwed anything up. "Fine," he groaned. _Well, Chad, if you're going to have to say sorry, make it good_, the actor in him professed. Chad took an unsuspecting Sonny's hand and held it gently, but firmly in his own. He looked deep into her eyes' chocolatey depths, which were angry at first, but that was ever so slowly fading away. "Sonny," he said her name softly, "I probably shouldn't have freaked you out like that. You're just... funny when you get freaked out... and..." he quickly got back to the point when she was looking annoyed again, "it was wr-wrong... of me. I'm s-sorry."

"Aw, gee, Chad! That apology wasn't half bad," Sonny smiled. Yep, there's the old Sonny. The one who was as cute as a button and smiled like there was no tomorrow.

"You're not getting many apologies out of me, Munroe, so cherish it while you can," smirked Chad.

"We'll see about that," the brunette beamed, giggling. She turned to skip out of 'The Great CDC's dressing room, but she was surprised when she felt a tug on her arm that pulled her back. The nonchalant grin faded from her face when he pulled her back closer than she would have expected. Their faces were now only inches apart, Sonny's eyes questioningly searching the swimming blue ones.

"You might wanna watch out, Munroe," he grinned, and it was a hot one. His voice transformed from smug to... _husky_. "That ice cream-stealing ghost just might come back for seconds."

Sonny was pretty sure that she melted on the inside, whether she liked it or not. But when they were inches apart and he was practically breathing into her ear, it was _really hard_ not to! He let her go after they both savored the feeling of rushing adrenaline and blood to the cheeks, Sonny left his dressing room, pretty sure that that was the most flustered she'd ever been after walking away from Chad Dylan Cooper, and that was saying something.

As day faded into night, Sonny packed up her belongings inside her purse and headed out of her door, but not before looking back. Everything was quiet and motionless. She smirked to herself and shook her head. "There's no such thing as ghosts," she laughed, closing the door and locking it behind her. Sonny headed home.

At the exact same moment as Sonny was pulling out of the Condor Studios parking lot, there was a fallen picture frame on her vanity.


End file.
